Summary and Reviews of Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata

Excerpt
Vanishing World

As I grew into adulthood I continued to fall in love with both real and nonreal people.

When I was old enough, I wanted to leave home as soon as possible, but it was hard to make a living without a proper job, and my mother didn't seem in any hurry for me to leave. I finally managed to leave home after I finished college and found a job.

I was hired by a company that supplied construction materials, like onsite scaffolding, working in their office in an old building in Nihonbashi, central Tokyo. Once I'd got used to the work, I started wanting to have a baby, and so at age twenty-five I married a man I met at a matchmaking party.

However, our relationship didn't last long, and we soon got divorced.

We had taken both our jobs into consideration and planned for me to be artificially inseminated on my twenty-eighth birthday. He was properly set up with a long-term lover, and our respective lovers both came to congratulate us at our wedding ceremony.

He had always liked to...

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

1. Early on, we learn how the narrator's relationship to romance, sex, and the body is shaped by her mother. She writes, of the evenings where her mother works late, "The house felt like it was covered in the sticky fingerprints of her soul, and I was relieved that I couldn't see her face" (26). How does the narrator's relationship with her mother—specifically as this ghostly, nearly haunting, presence—set the tone for the novel?
2. For much of the book, Amane frequently turns to her fictional lovers in times of need, pulling them out of her Prada pouch while on a walk at the river or in the bathroom at work. In fact, she explains to her coworker, "Some people say it's escaping reality, but I don't agree. Rather, it's nourishing my...